In Plato's Cave

Description

In this delightful and candid memoir, Alvin Kernan recalls his life as a student, professor, provost, and dean during a distinguished career in some of higher education’s most hallowed halls. With his customary wit and insight, Kernan recounts his experiences at Columbia, Williams, Oxford, Yale, and Princeton in the company of an array of fascinating colleagues. And he describes from an insider’s point of view how colleges and universities in the second half of the twentieth century have been transformed in radical ways. Against the background of what it was like to work and teach in turbulent decades of change, Kernan details the broader educational battles in which he became embroiled. He discusses the struggle for equality of opportunity for women and minorities; the questioning of administrative and intellectual authority; the appearance of deconstructive types of theory; the technological shift from printed to electronic information; the politicization of the classroom; and much more. His vividly remembered account is not only a unique personal story, it is a thought-provoking history that brims with insight into what has been won and lost in the culture wars. Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Shifting Educational Plates 1 Theater and Reality in Greenwich Village: Columbia, 1946 2 The Other End of the Log: Williams College, 1946-1949 3 Chatter About Shelley: Oxford, 1949-1951 4 See My George Gascoigne: Yale Graduate School, 1951-1954 5 Keeping Them Quiet: Yale, 1954-1960 6 The Two Cultures, Science and Literature 7 Publish or Perish: Tenure at Yale, 1960-1964 8 Goodbye, Boola Boola: Yale Administration, 1964-1970 9 When Do We Want It? Now! The Bobby Seale Trial, New Haven, 1970 10 Question All Authority: The Breakdown of Meaning and Language, Yale, 1970-1973 11 A Long Walk After Lunch: Princeton and the Later 1970s 12 The New Technology Calls All in Doubt: Television, Books, Libraries, Computers 13 No Obligation to Be Right, Only to Be Interesting: Teaching as Power and Politics, Princeton, the 1980s 14 The Break Between Generations, Retirement Epilogue. The Dogs Bark, the Caravan Passes On Index